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Avatar universal

Not sure I belong here but it involves Fentanyl so here goes...

I'm not a drug addict; in fact all the doctors I've met so far have never met someone like me at all! You see, pain killers have no effect on my pain at all!! That's especially not much fun when you also have a disease like MS (lots of pain there!) and gums that are so sensitive that I can't touch them with a Q-tip without putting Benzocaine on it and even that only reduces the pain from a 10 to about a 6 but I can deal with that.
Anyway, my pain management MD had me on 100 mcg every 72 hours which didn't do anything for the pain but I'd been sleeping a lot lately because I've had a terrible disappointment a few days ago (I have anorexia, too!) my blood sugar was only 49 so they took to the ER where some idiot ripped off a fresh patch so I had a horrible narcotic withdrawal! (Because the never affected my pain, I forgot how strong they are!!) I don't know if it's the Fentanyl, the Anorexia, or what but I'm afraid to get out of bed, I'm afraid to talk to people, I'm afraid they'll put me back in the hospital, I'm afraid I won't eat enough but thinking of eating makes me feel sick, I can't call one of my best friends because her husband has pancreatic cancer that's already spread to his liver so I only call her when I feel happy, and one daughter is away in San Antonio but I don't want to call her because she's already thinking of moving away because there's so much responsibility on her because her sister lives in Jerusalem, Israel. I'm just sleeping all the time and I'm scaring my husband, too, and I don't want him to call911 again!!! Is sleeping a lot and not wanting to eat common symptoms? I guess that's what I need to know. Thank you and God bless you!!!
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Avatar universal
If you don't get any pain relief from the Fentanyl, why have the patch on at all?  Just curious.

Sleeping a lot is not a common sign; usually it's the opposite; you cannot sleep at all.   I'm confused...do you have a script for the patch, and do you continue to keep putting it on?  

Appetite suppression, sure, that's a withdrawal symptom, but then again, you have anorexia so I'd imagine you don't want to eat often (I suffered from this eating disorder from age 10-16, but luckily it faded away.)

I'm sorry you are in pain.  Have your doctors tried Gabapentin or Pregbalin (Lyrica)???
Helpful - 0
4898964 tn?1381257899
It's hard to make complete sense of exactly what is happening here.  Was the patch that got ripped off in the ER your only Fentanyl?  Do/Did you not have anymore left?  Do you have one on now?

Try to get all the important information down in bullet points to make it easier for us to understand exactly what we are dealing with.  I can see that you are very frightened here and understandably so.  It sounds like you really have a lot on your plate so to speak.

To answer your last question, sleeping a lot is not a sign of opiate withdrawal.  In fact it should be the complete opposite with the patient not getting a wink in at all for quite a long time (particularly since you are on a high dose of fentanyl).  The eating varies between different people. Some  can't keep anything down and extreme vomiting is common, others are fine with food.  It seems to depend on the exact opiate that said person was taking to some extent, I myself was taking oxycontin and that was fine for food.  Hopefully someone who has personal experience with fentanyl will drop in and give you some more advise soon.  God bless.
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Avatar universal
not sure what to say.  i know Fentanyl is very hard to come off of.  can your husband help you?  if you want off Fentanyl you should taper from the 100 mcg patch down to 12 mcg under your DR.  100 mcg is too high a dose to come off of without tapering.
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Avatar universal
Hello Meoddball Welcome to the forum. I'm not understanding if you are Now on the fent our are you coming off it ?  lesa
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